While My Heart Still Beats
by LivinJgrl123
Summary: Mara never needed to be warned about danger creeping around every corner of Gotham; the very literal definition often was often spotted wherever she went. *COMPLETE*
1. there's a body outside

***screams I AM BACK with a sheepish grin on my face with a sign that says "dont kill me" taped to my forehead* I am going to try and start updating shit again. Apologies for the late return and lack of updates. This is a short little thing to try and get myself back into finishing some things so that if I disappear again, I will not have any fics waiting to be updated. Love you all.**

* * *

I.

* * *

When the Red Hood is still not a subject whispered on the streets, when he is still just barely more than a rumor, a myth, floating around inside a small number of Gotham's criminal's heads, there are deaths, that are unaccounted for.

And she sees them. She finds a body, outside her building, in the alley that separates her apartment building. She doesn't scream, she doesn't call the police. Her throat is dry as she goes back inside, hoping no one saw her see the body.

(The man had had his guts ripped out, and if not for the telltale signs, she would not have recognized him for the man he was: one of the locals street dealers she passes when she goes up Northwest Freuiden Street, when she's late to something, and she's missed her bus.)

By the time the sun has risen, the blood has nearly frozen from the frigid temperatures of the night, and someone else has discovered the body.

She watches from her window, choking back a scream she knows will stay buried in her chest.

(She does not leave the house that day.)


	2. we've got a witness

II.

* * *

He didn't intend for a witness to come out of the situation. Really, he hadn't.

But the woman, with dark hair, narrowed eyes, and a suspicious lilt to her facial features saw him. She saw him shoot someone, in the foot. In the head. She only screamed, though, when he had plunged the knife into the yelling man's shoulder. He'd pissed the Red Hood off.

Soon, they would know better not to.

(But it's still early in his game.)

Her hears her scream, and he immediately slits the man's throat. Lets him fall to the ground in a puddle of blood, and he can hear her shrill voice, chanting "_fuck fuck fuck_" before she turns and runs. He dashes to the mouth of the alley, but only watches on as she sprints away from him. Not towards any police precinct, but probably towards that dump she calls a home.

Jason briefly wonders if he should kill her, but then he decides that it can wait. He's seen her before.

She's not the type who would _tattle_. He thinks he recalls seeing her in the dumpy, moldy apartment building, with sharp eyes darting to and fro, with her arms wrapped around her torso as she had shivered in the night breeze, some days ago. He thinks he remembers her eyes scanning the area, the sky, the street, even the other buildings.

She's not the type to tell. She's the type who listens, who watches from the shadows with disdain written all over her face and stained in her cheeks in a sickly pallor. She's _eavesdrops_, she happens to see things. He can tell, just by seeing her.

Maybe, in another life, she would have been useful to him.

(But he plans on killing her, anyway.)


	3. blood in my mouth

III.

* * *

Her name is Mara.

She's not in anyway that much of a pleasant person. Her family didn't like her, when they'd been around to raise her. And that was just fine. She hates them too, with every bone in her body. At least, she _did_ hate them. Till she'd moved here, at nineteen, and had kept her head low and ducked, her eyes sharp, her angular features always titled up towards the sky.

Blood fell as rain, on some nights. You could almost see it, in the neon red lights of the street signs she passed by. You could imagine the smell of blood, the way it mingled in your nostrils.

Blood falls as rain, some nights, at she gags, when she smells it. When she tastes it on her tongue, but it's only the memory that makes her sprint to an alley and retch behind a dumpster, the memory of a time where she always tasted blood in her mouth.

Not necessarily from hits. From bites, from violent kisses, kisses she barely remember. Kisses with a boy, at sixteen, she wished she'd never had. He'd left a taste, in her mouth, the black-haired boy had. It was bitter, and it wasn't safe. It was violent, like the man leaving bodies lying around for cops to find.

(And like him, no one knew of him. But they will. They will. They always do find out.)

She hates that memory. There's more than one, there's _always_ been more than one, of a boy, whose name she doesn't care to voice in her head (though she knows it). Memories of rough hands, of the only sounds in the night were her harsh breathing and his smirk in the dark. The memory of fingers digging into her hips and a mouth at her ear haunts her, when she finds a body, when she sees a dealer on the streets, when she gets shoved out of the way of a group of thuggish looking boys on their way to spread whatever hell they can think of.

But the taste of blood remains, and she keeps finding bodies. Only one of them makes her retch, makes her stomach heave until it's empty. _He_ dumps a body, on her apartment building's door step. The limbs of the gangling woman have been mutilated, bone visible through mangled flesh. There's a message, written in blood for her.

_I know you know_.

She can't scrub the taste of blood out of her mouth. No matter how hard she tires.

She wants to kill him for this, for making her sick, for making her feel like the worst of them, of those who _did_ take the lives of others when there was no real _reason_. But she doesn't. She only watches the city from behind closed blinds.

Waiting.


	4. you were solid in my head

IV.

* * *

Jason doesn't think much of her, though. He forgets, because she is unimportant. She is unfamiliar to him, in a way of his choosing. He knows that he knows her, knows her name, knows her face. From his old life, perhaps, he cares not.

When he sticks his blade in someone's shoulder, and digs it into the wall behind the wailing thug (they never _listen to him_) he hears footsteps going away from him. He leaves the wailing woman there, with a knife in her shoulder, and follows after _her_ (she's been running into him a lot as of late), and when he sees that she's standing, stock still, a block ahead of him, at the end of the sidewalk, he allows himself to remember.

For a moment, but it still makes him smirk under his helmet.

She runs, as if she senses this, and he chases.

It's how this game starts. It how he doesn't go batshit (_ah ha_) insane for his first few weeks slowly, quietly, worming his way through the crime underworld of Gotham City. He chases her, when she sees him. Catches her in the act._  
_

Each time, he gets that much closer to catching her.

Jason chases the woman, until he catches her. He utters threats in her ear as his hands shackle her thin wrists to her sides. Her features are more stern, sharper, than what he remembers. He thinks he's going to kill her, because, as much fun as this has been, he doesn't need a witness. What he needs is to get his operation on the go, to get the gears of his plan moving.

But then she spits on him, spits out _blood_, on his jacket, and the memory of her doing the very same thing, when she was younger, when he still wore a cap and the domino mask, masquerading as the sidekick to the Batman. He gets caught off guard, momentarily.

It's enough for her to shove her away from him, glare, and dash off, a fine sheen of sweat visible on her forehead.

He watches her go.

And then he starts to laugh.


	5. she has steel under her skin

V.

* * *

On the night that it all happens, it's weeks from the first time he dumped the body outsider her building. She's been scarce, hiding herself away from the area he's been in. It's amusing to him, but he scares the hell out of her. There is violence, carved into every bone in his body. Mara sees it as the device he uses to keep his spine straight, the device that helps him slit the throat of someone who crossed him, someone who broke a deal with him.

She finds less and less bodies, leading up to this night. But on this night, she finds many. Many, many bodies. All dead. All cold. All killed by him. She is horrified by what she sees, even though this isn't the worst that this city has ever seen. Only once, does she encounter him.

He reminds her too much of the boy she once knew. One who is probably dead, has been dead. His movements are familiar. His voice, sometimes, is too. But he is more violent than she remembers the boy being. And he is callous, and cruel, and a mastermind at best. She avoids him at all costs, but when she encounters him, she cannot run away.

The Red Hood refuses to let her.

He tells her it's been fun, that he wishes it didn't have to be like this. She sees the blade in his hand, and she scowls. She tells him he doesn't wish that, and she tells him that he has caused the taste of blood in her mouth to be permanent.

(But she has not been kissed in many, many months. It's just the memories that linger on her tongue.)

He laughs at her. Stabs her, but it's not lethal. The knife is deep enough in her belly that when he twists, she screams. He doesn't flinch under the helmet. His mind is muddled by what he's going to do, how he wants it all to play out. He remembers he made her scream once, in a different life. A different way.

This one is better.

(It's more like him.)

She spits at him, as she clutches at her stomach, seconds after he yanks the knife out.

She has not changed.

Her features are still sharp, even years after his seeing her. Her hair still is pulled back, away from her face. Revealing a sickly pallor in her olive skin.

Mara still glares at him, like she used to glare at _him_, when he was still Robin.

He leaves her, but not for dead. He leaves, to carry out his mission of the night. The night where he gets what he wants. He leaves her there, screaming after him in a fit of anger in pain (_not tears_, she's always been more callous than he could _ever_ hope to be), until she is carted off by an ambulance he had someone call. He leaves her. With the intent of not seeing her again.

Not after _this_ night.

But he does.


	6. unable to run, for but a moment

**A/N: FIN.**

* * *

VI.

* * *

He finds her, several days later, after that night. After his plans have been blown to hell.

He is seething with anger when she comes across him. He's beaten a man, to death, with his bare hands, because he is _angry_, he didn't get what he wanted. He is without his helmet, and she stares at him, as he stands there, motionless, over the motionless, lifeless body.

Mara _knows_ this man. With blood on his fists, with his uncovered eyes fixed on the ground. Her mouth is open, but no sound comes out. Her breath is caught in her throat, for but a moment, before she remembers how to breath. While her heart still beats, she swore never to let herself get killed. By someone long forgotten. But he had nearly killed her.

She'd left the hospital today. She cares not for doctors, for the shady looking thugs in the waiting room, for the bribed doctors. So she'd left. And now here she stands, unable to move.

Until she allows herself to think his name.

_Jason_.

It's all she remembers, aside from bruising fingers and a smirk she'd wanted to wipe off his face for weeks, while they'd known each other.

She doesn't realize she's spoken a-loud until he's looking right at her.

A slow smirk creeps onto his lips, and she runs.

He does not follow her, this time.

(But he keeps leaving bodies on her doorstep.)


End file.
